Not at First
by Malvolia
Summary: After the Great War, Millerna finds herself in helping others...and finds that actions speak louder than emotions alone. Millerna/Dryden
1. Chapter 1

Eries was disappointed when she heard Dryden left, as Millerna knew she would be. She had always pushed for that marriage, no matter how much her younger sister had insisted she was in love with someone else. After Millerna discovered that Chid was Allen and Marlene's child, she grew less angry over the vehemence with which Eries had striven to keep Allen away. Eries was no fool. She had probably known of the secret for years. It explained much of her attitude towards the knight.

Allen.... She'd summoned him to tell him about Dryden leaving, a conversation that turned out differently than she had expected. It wasn't until he was actually standing there that she had realized how much she had relied on others to make her happy. She wondered who she was alone, and she wanted to find out. So instead of telling him she was free, as she had planned, she told him she didn't want to rely on him, that she needed to find who she was on her own. When he walked out of the room, it was the last she'd see of him for longer than she would have imagined. On several occasions she nearly sent for him, but she overcame the impulse and waited. Surely if he cared for her he would still at least come around from time to time. At first she thought he didn't come because the fighting was still raging in some places. Then she heard the news that Celena had mysteriously returned. (She didn't hear it from Allen. He was probably too busy caring for his sister.)

Dryden didn't come back. Not that she expected it. Not after Hitomi told them the marriage was wrong. Not after she herself told him she might not be waiting.

Now, Millerna spends her days with her sister. Their relationship has strengthened over the past few months. It hadn't taken long after Dryden moved out for Millerna to ask Eries if she would mind moving to the room next door, and there are many nights when the sisters sit up late into the night, sharing what is on their minds and hearts. Millerna never knew the burdens Eries bore as the middle child—how shrewdly she worked to convince her father that he needed her help in running the kingdom more than he needed to make a political alliance by marrying her off, how subtly she has influenced governing decisions, how carefully she investigated Duke Freid and Dryden after they were chosen for her sisters.

"But I don't love Dryden," protested Millerna.

"Marlene didn't love Duke Freid," said Eries. "Not at first."

Millerna doesn't offer that protest again.

There is much to do in these days after the Great War. The kingdom of Asturia has not suffered as many losses as the kingdoms of Fanelia and Freid, but the suffering is real nonetheless. Millerna brings blankets and hot soup down to the shelters where those who have lost their homes live while they rebuild. She packages lunches for the men who are laying new foundations, helps the women with laundry, tells stories to the children.

She hears stories, too. Of merchants raising their prices and families who are paying five times as much for a loaf of bread as they were before the war. Of loans called in and of families giving up what little they have to repay what they can, promising the rest at higher and higher interest rates. Of people sleeping on top of their luggage so that nothing will be stolen.

She hears of Allen, helping Van to gather the scattered people of Fanelia. She hears of Celena, growing more aware and more confident by the day, but destined never to be quite the person she would have been if it weren't for her unexplained disappearance.

And she sees Dryden. Not in person—he has always just left, just turned a corner, just gone into another home—but everywhere. In the faces of those who are paying honest prices for well-made goods. In the new buildings his low interest loans financed. In the smiles of children who receive candy free every Wednesday morning when it is given away in the square...and every other morning that they are lucky enough to run across their benefactor.

One afternoon, up to her elbows in wet clothes, daydreaming of Allen, she tosses her hair out of her eyes and catches a fleeting glimpse of a face in the window opposite her. Dryden, nodding in approval. She remembers Allen's reaction at finding Hitomi doing "dangerous" work like this.

Why hasn't Allen come, she wonders, for the millionth time, and for the first time she realizes that Allen has never come. Not for her. Always she has come for him. He accepted her love, her caresses, but never offered his own in return, never took the initiative. Never would have changed his whole life for her. But why is she thinking of this now?

The door across the way opens, and a familiar form slips out and moves quickly down the street without a glance in her direction.

"Dryden!" she calls, leaping from the washtub and sprinting towards him. When she reaches him her hair is falling out of its plain ribbon, she is covered in suds, she is panting like a racehorse...and she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.


	2. Chapter 2

He stands looking down at her, smiling encouragingly and waiting for her to speak, but Millerna hadn't planned to speak to him at all, let alone after just running him down, and therefore finds herself at something of a loss.

"Dryden," she repeats, after she catches her breath, "I...." She pushes a strand of hair out of her face and the drop of water that runs down her arm as she does so reminds her....

"You've been doing laundry," he says when she throws a glance over her shoulder at the washtub. "Work looks good on you, Princess."

"It's nothing," she demurs. "The very least I could do."

"Heroes are for a time of war," says Dryden. "There are no heroes in reconstruction. And no small tasks."

"Thank you," she stammers, wishing he would shut up so she could have half a second to think.

He looks past her. "You have some would-be assistants."

She turns to see a trio of small children splashing in the laundry. One is snapping a shirt at his friends. One is about to step into the tub. "Stop that!" she calls, taking a few steps towards them and then hesitating, conflicted.

"You'd better take care of that now," Dryden grins. "Have dinner with me tonight? I've taken rooms at the White Horse."

Millerna nods distractedly and takes off, chasing the boys away from the laundry and sorting out the few items of clothing they'd strewn on the ground before Dryden noticed them. By the time it occurs to her that she has no idea what hour Dryden eats dinner these days, he is nowhere to be seen.

She spends the rest of the afternoon wondering what in all Gaea she had been thinking. It has been months since she and Dryden have even seen each other, let alone spoken. Surely he has better things to do than sit down to a meal with her. Probably even better companions to eat with. In her work with the people of Asturia, she has heard many of them—many attractive women, too—talk of their admiration of the man. True, he had once said he loved her, but many people spoke of love without knowing what they were saying.

The sun is nearly setting when she comes to a decision. She will go to the White Horse. She will have dinner with Dryden, and she will release him from a foolish promise he should never have had to make. No man should be trapped in a loveless marriage for the sake of politics. It wasn't right.

Knowing her mission, she doesn't go home to change into dinner attire before making her way to the local inn. She simply runs her fingers through her hair and ties it back again; washes a few smudges off her face; folds her apron and carries it over her arm. There is no need to be showy. She isn't trying to entice him, she is trying to free him.

It is after the dinner hour by the time she arrives, and she wonders too late if he only took dinner after the usual time during their marriage because of everything that was happening around them. But he welcomes her as though she were exactly on time.

"May I take your apron?" he asks, with an expression too solemn to be real.

"Oh," she says, handing it over, "yes. I haven't been back to the palace since I saw you earlier."

"So I gathered," he says, looking her over quickly enough that she almost missed it. She flushes, wishing for a moment that she had gone back to change after all, feeling strangely out of her element in plain clothes with this man. "Too busy keeping young scoundrels out of your hair?"

"They're not scoundrels," she protests, "they're just high-spirited."

His mouth quirks at her answer and she realizes he had been joking. She is his wife and she didn't know him at all.

_Was_ his wife. Past tense.

They hardly speak over the salad course. She keeps darting awkward looks at him and his answering expression is increasingly amused.

"It's all right," he says as the main course arrives—a hearty stew, nothing extravagant. "I didn't ask you here to seduce you."

"Of course not," she answers quickly.

"I've been following your career with interest. It's not every day you see a princess doing laundry or serving at a homeless shelter."

"It's not every day you see a wealthy merchant making deals that cost him money and then sitting down to stew for dinner," she counters.

"I'm not losing money."

"You're not making any, either."

He shrugs casually. "The market is still suppressed. There's no fun in being the only one in the game."

"Your competitors don't seem to think so."

For the first time, his face darkens. "I have no desire for profit if it means another man going hungry."

"I didn't mean...."

"Don't worry, Princess." He smiles again. "I didn't think you did."

She fidgets with her spoon. "Why do you call me 'Princess'?"

"Because I haven't earned the right to call you anything else."

She remembers the glowing reports of him she has heard all over Asturia, and connects them with the terrible expression that had just come over him when those who oppressed its people were brought to his mind. He isn't doing this just to impress her. She finds herself more pleased than disappointed, and doesn't stop to wonder why she'd be disappointed at all.

"On the contrary," she asserts warmly. "I can think of no one worthier than you. 'Millerna.' Please."

"Millerna," he repeats.

It's good to hear.


	3. Chapter 3

Wine comes with the dessert course, which surprises her a bit because she knows wine prices have spiked along with most other prices since the end of the war. Dryden sees the hesitation on her face and casually tells her of his recent investment in a vineyard just outside the city limits, held by several local farmers. He doesn't use the adjective "struggling," but she recognizes the family name of one of his new business partners because she spent most of yesterday morning tending to his ailing wife and children. She drinks the wine gratefully.

It has become easier to talk to him now that they are back on a first name basis. He tells her stories of the vineyard and the new agricultural methods in use there. She relates anecdotes of the children who tag along at her heels throughout a normal day. She doesn't know it, but as she tells their stories he is hearing hers—how she has put her medical training into practice, how little time she spends at the palace, how her love for her country and her people has taken root and blossomed. He is hearing the woman she has become.

"...and there were bandages absolutely everywhere, and we finally found him because he still hadn't let go of the end of the last roll when he fell asleep behind the sofa." She laughs, her eyes sparkling.

"I know Evan," Dryden replies, "and the other day when we crossed paths he was climbing a porch railing, one arm bandaged from wrist to shoulder."

"I _thought_ we came up short when we re-rolled them. Ah, well...let him have his fun."

"It's getting late," Dryden says, pushing back his chair. "It's time we were going."

"'We'?" Millerna repeats stupidly, her heart racing.

"It's a long walk back to the palace, and the streets aren't safe yet. There are still some bands of ruffians who'd take more than a bandage if they could get it."

"I've walked home alone after dark before."

"It's probably not the best plan just now," he says. She waits for him to add something like, "don't do it," but he doesn't. It's for that reason she rises without further protest and even accepts his cloak when he offers it to her.

They are silent as they walk back to the palace, but the sounds of nightfall echo around them—crickets, frogs, owls, a distant wolf. The Mystic Moon gleams clear and blue in the night sky, and Millerna hears Hitomi's words in her mind: "The right man for you is Allen!" For the first time, she remembers them without triumph.

Hitomi had the power to predict the future, wasn't that right? Yet how many times had she changed her own predictions? How many times had she saved Van's life, or Allen's? And how long had she said she loved Allen when really....

When really....

Millerna pulls the cloak closer around her. The palace gates are in view. She has only a few hundred yards from there to the door of the palace, and she has to tell Dryden before then, has to release him, but still hasn't found the words. It seems so much harder now. Maybe the wine is to blame.

"This is where I'll leave you," he says at the gate, holding out her apron. "You'll be safe from here."

She grabs the apron and twists the cloak off with her free hand to return to him. "Don't wait for me," she blurts as he reaches for it.

"As soon as I see you through the gate, I'll go."

"No," she says, grabbing his hand around the fabric in her urgency to make him understand. "Not just now, not ever. Don't wait. Please. There are better...." She trails off as he takes the cloak from her hands and places it around her shoulders. He holds the lapels lightly, running his thumbs over the material.

"It's still cold," he says. "Keep it."

"I can't...."

"Bring it back," he says, stepping away and knocking hard on the gate, "when it works for you. I'm not in a hurry."

The entrance door set into the gate swings open, cutting off Millerna's reply. As it closes behind her, she can still see him standing on the other side.

She falls asleep with the cloak crushed in her arms, convinced that they could not have been talking about the same thing.


	4. Chapter 4

No matter how early she arrives, no matter how late she leaves (never after sundown anymore), no matter how often she passes the White Horse, she is only ever in time to catch the last sign of him slipping away. A dying laugh. His head rising above the others in the crowd. The corner of his coat flicking around the side of a building.

Word on the street is that he's been seen in the company of an extraordinarily beautiful, highly accomplished woman.

"We used to think you might do for him," a wizened old grandmother says, "but that was nonsense, of course. Straya is much more suitable. Not so selfish, you know."

"What?" Millerna gasps.

"Knows her own mind," another chimes in. "None of this back-and-forth you see so often in so many young ladies these days."

"Stringing the young men out like fish on a line."

"I never...." Millerna begins, and feels a hand on her shoulder. It's warm and familiar. "Allen!"

"Millerna," he says. "I'm sorry. I've been away too long."

"Allen..."

"I've been thinking of you every day. Trying to deserve you."

"Straya could have anyone she wants," the old woman continues, as though she is still the focus of everyone's attention.

"Now I know I can never truly deserve you. I can only love you."

"But she only wants one man."

Allen's eyes are warm, inviting. "Come away with me."

"Dryden," says the old woman.

Millerna can't move. Her limbs feel trapped against her sides. Allen is moving closer, and closer, and it's getting warmer, and warmer, and the old woman is still talking about that _other_ woman, and Dryden doesn't want Millerna anymore but she can smell him, smell him like his arms are wrapped around her, but he doesn't want her, and that's okay, isn't it, it's okay because she's always wanted Allen, hasn't she, _hasn't_ she, and here he is, and it's so hot, so hot, and Dryden's smell and her arms are tied and...

...she wakes up screaming, tangled up in her blankets and the cloak she fell asleep with.

Eries hurries into the room, surveys the situation, and sits on the edge of the bed, grabbing Millerna's hand. She asks no questions, for which Millerna is grateful because she isn't sure how she would answer them.

After she calms down, she asks the question that's been lurking in her mind for months now. "Why did you object to Allen?"

Her older sister straightens, but does not release her hand. "You were betrothed."

"That can't be it. Not all of it."

"I believe in keeping your word, and you were promised to someone else."

"You weren't even kind to him," Millerna says.

"He didn't need the encouragement."

Millerna looks out the window towards the harbor. She recalls the day she tried to go with Allen, in defiance of her sister's request. He had picked her up and put her back in the carriage. At the time, she had thought he was protecting her. "Yes, he did," she whispers. She leans her head onto her knees.

Eries silently runs her hand over Millerna's hair.

"You were afraid he was confusing me with Marlene, weren't you? You were afraid the same thing would happen to us?"

The hand stops moving, and the answering voice is tense. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know. You _knew_." She looks up into her sister's eyes and Eries looks away. "About Chid. You knew, and you never said anything."

"It isn't my place to speak ill of living or dead."

All those years, and Eries had been content to cast herself as the villain of the piece, the one trying to keep Millerna from her true love. All those years, and Millerna had accepted without question that her sister would push her into a marriage for purely political reasons.

"I'm sorry, sister," Millerna says penitently. "Sorry I didn't guess."

"Why should you apologize for not guessing something I never wanted you to know? How did you find out?"

"I found Marlene's diary and read it. How did you?"

Eries gazes across the room as if gazing back over the years. "Marlene made no effort to hide her feelings."

Millerna grimaces. "Not unlike her little sister?"

"Not unlike. But strong feeling isn't a bad thing, not always. Unless perhaps it interferes with your sleep." She's looking at the cloak now, suddenly curious.

Millerna's face flames, but she tosses her head, a trace of her old defiance returning. "Aren't you going to ask me what I was dreaming about?"

"It isn't my place," Eries repeats, and for once Millerna wishes her sister was a bit pushier. She could use some advice. She tries to work up the courage to say something—what?—and then Eries is standing, preparing to leave. "What matters is that _you _know what it was that distressed you."

"But what if I don't?"

"Trust yourself," Eries says. "Like I do."

"Like you...." Millerna leaps from her bed and throws her arms around her sister. "Thank you."

When she is alone again, she sinks into the chair her sister had occupied, replaying the events of the dream in her mind, trying to make sense of them, wondering what it was that bothered her, running her thumb over the rough fabric....

Stopping. Staring down at the cloak she had gripped in one hand.

And knowing.


	5. Chapter 5

Millerna rides to the White Horse, not trusting her ability to keep herself from running, otherwise. Dryden's cloak streams out behind her in the open stretches where she gives her mare a chance to stretch her legs. She knows exactly what she is doing, exactly what she is riding to the inn to say, and finding Allen there when she arrives is so much like her dream that she doesn't question it.

"Allen!" she exclaims, reining in her mount.

"Princess Millerna," he responds. "You're up early this morning." He looks pleased to see her, and he offers a hand to help her down. "I was just on my way to the palace. I have some matters to discuss with your father. I hoped to see you as well."

She throws him the reins. "Tie up my horse, will you? I'm in a hurry." She's too focused even to notice the shock on his face.

In response to her inquiries, the boy behind the desk offers that he hasn't seen Dryden since he went back upstairs after breakfasting with the gentleman who just left. He directs her to a room at the end of the hall on the second floor. She takes the stairs two at a time, tripping awkwardly over her skirt once and nearly plummeting backwards.

Dryden doesn't answer at her first knock. The vision of a mysteriously beautiful woman returns to her—is that why he had been so quick to leave her at the palace gate? Had he been hurrying her out of the way so he could meet up with another...? No. Surely the boy would have mentioned a woman. Or at least not have been completely able to hide his adolescent suspicions. Steeling her courage, she knocks again, then again, louder.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" she hears from inside, and she sighs with relief that she isn't knocking at an empty room, after all. Now to hope harder for just the one occupant. "Give a man..." He's holding a straight-edge razor in one hand, and half of his face is covered in soapy foam. She cranes her neck automatically to see past him. "...a second," he finishes, looking over his shoulder in confusion. "Millerna? Were you looking for somebody else?"

"Why, is anybody else here?" she asks too swiftly.

"I shave alone," he grins, a grin that broadens and softens into the most genuine smile she has ever seen. "I do everything in this room alone, if you must know."

"I mustn't...it's not...."

Suddenly she realizes she's been here before, falling over herself and throwing her heart at somebody's feet. She'd promised herself she'd never do it again, never rely on somebody else again, and she almost turns away before she recalls that's not why she came this time.

"I don't need you," she blurts out, and the smile disappears. "I've gotten by just fine without you and I can get by just fine without you in the future. I have my own life, and my own dreams, and I can stand on my own two feet.

"And so can you. You've been successful in ways I never would have dreamed possible, and you've helped so many people, and everybody loves you."

He opens his mouth to interrupt, but she rushes on heedlessly. "And I know you told me you'd make me fall in love with you, but I don't want you to think I'm holding you to that promise, because I'm not. You're free. You don't have to be tied to a spoiled child who doesn't know her own mind."

"I'm not," he cuts in. "I'm not. I...." He throws back his head and laughs. "I can't believe you're making me have this conversation half-shaved. Give me a second to wipe off this lather."

He disappears behind an inner door. Millerna stands in the hallway, disconcerted, listening to the sounds of splashing water. He returns with a clean face and without the razor. He seems more serious, but there is still an odd glint in his eyes.

"Now, where were we?"

"You're not..." she falters.

"Ah, yes! I'm _not_ tied to a spoiled child," he says. "Don't worry."

"Oh," she says. "Good. Well, then. I'm sorry to have taken up your...."

And he has stepped forward and closed the gap and he's kissing her and she drops the cloak which doesn't matter because she had forgotten she was holding it anyway and she has her arms wrapped around his neck and this is nothing, _nothing_ like a ceremonial wedding kiss, nothing like kissing Allen ever was, and in some faraway part of her mind where things have become beautifully clear she knows a kiss could only always be better with two hearts than one.

"Funny," he whispers in her ear. "I thought I'd be the one to prove myself to you, and it turns out the other way around."

She laughs incredulously, and there is all the time in the world to show him how he's proven himself, all the time in the world to join forces against those oppressing their people, _their_ people, but right now....

"Your cheek is scratchy," she whispers back.

He pulls away, grinning again. "Come on in and help me finish up."

"I wouldn't want to intrude on your alone time."

"I've had enough of that," he says, and offers her his hand.

She takes it.

**~~fin~~**


End file.
